I’m not that drawn by any of the covers either. If I have to pick between them, though, I’d go for Anno Dracula. Among other things, it’s clear & organized & invokes a period aesthetic. It also doesn’t require as much squinting to read.

I have to give it to Anno Dracula as well. I actually find it a pretty intriguing cover. The title is bold enough to catch my eye, and the design is “non-schlocky” enough for me to consider for a moment taking it seriously enough to actually read. Both are big wins.

The Five is actually a great cover too, but its for the wrong genre. That is a crime thriller cover, so it’s sort of lost on the genre crowd. We just aren’t conditioned for that sort of look and style. So points for going with it, but probably not as successful a choice. But if that book was about a child murder in the blue collar neighborhoods of Boston, you’d have a winner.

Birthmarked – is that the back cover synopsis on the front cover? Who knows, its so hard to read, nobody can tell.

Hello! Glad you all seem to like the Anno Dracula cover – I’m the designer! It’s published by Titan Books and there should be a post on their blog (www.titanbooks.com/blog), and my blog (www.amazing15design.blogspot.com) at some point in the next month or so about the cover design process.

Last year, I was shocked to read that Iain M. Banks announced that he had cancer and was going to die within months. I had first come across him when I picked up Consider Phlebas, and several of its sequels when my Waldenbooks shut down and liquidated its stock: his books were among the first that I grabbed and Continue Reading →

[via /Film] The mathematicians over at Popular Science have determined that the 8 year-old James T. Kirk would have to had exerted a force of nearly 900 pounds with his fingers to stop from being flung over the precipice as seen in the trailer for J.J. Abrams's Star Trek reboot. (Actually, this is why the chicks dig him.) While they Continue Reading →